


Taking a Break

by roami



Series: Fic Dump [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Chapter 698 (Naruto), Self-Indulgent, Uchiha Sasuke-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-04-11 11:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19109224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roami/pseuds/roami
Summary: After their final clash, Sasuke doesn't think going back to Konoha immediately is a good idea. Naruto agrees.





	1. the alteration

**Author's Note:**

> diverges from the beginning of chapter 699, after the infinite tsukuyomi is released

“To reiterate,” Kakashi says, leaning back against a rock as Sasuke starts to slowly walk around the area to get his blood flowing again. Naruto's doing the same thing, although the blond is walking much faster already. Sakura's healed their biggest injuries and is sitting near Kakashi, wiping tears off her cheeks. “Why exactly did you want to kill Naruto?”

 

Sasuke's eyes sweep through the valley before settling on the bloody X on the stones beside them. “Hn,” Sasuke says. “He's the only one who could pose a threat besides the joined forces of the Kage.”

 

“Can we not go through this whole thing again?” Naruto suggests.

 

“It would be nice to know what happened before we have to tell everyone else,” Kakashi says, shrugging. He glances at the sun, almost at its zenith.

 

“You wouldn't keep the details to yourself,” Sasuke says flatly, pulling out a shuriken — probably his own from earlier — that's embedded in a broken rock. He twirls it in his hand and looks at Naruto. He'd lost the battle, and so telling anyone anything isn't his call. That right belongs Naruto.

 

“Uh,” Naruto begins. “It's not that important anyway.” He scratches his cheek and chuckles nervously. Sasuke doesn't think it's a good idea to tell the other two members of Team Seven exactly what had gone down. Not only will it make them think differently of Naruto, but there is also too much risk that they would blurt whatever ideals Sasuke had had to the other Kage as ‘justification for his actions’. That would do nothing but make people wary and increase his jail time. And if they decide that they don't want to tell anyone, they could dangle the information over his head in order to get what they want. Sasuke isn't looking for more people to manipulate him.

 

“Are you going to release the Tsukuyomi anytime soon?” comes Kakashi's sarcastic drawl. Yes, soon, of course, but Sasuke wants some time to think before he's thrown in prison. He can still live up to his ideals, albeit on a smaller scale since he is in no shape to fight Kakashi and Sakura both so there's no chance of killing the Kage.

 

He'd lost the fight and. And. He's exhausted. Sasuke's tired of _pushing_ toward his ideals because it feels like trying to walk upstream through a river. Everyone else is pushing in the opposite direction. This had been his last big effort to do something good and he'd lost. There's no reason for him to be alive, and Naruto had said to stay alive for the sake of his only bond but he really doesn't think that is enough motivation to not just kill himself right here.

 

He still thinks the way he thinks. Naruto can't change his views on the world. So. A smaller scale, he will accept whatever hatred and blame they give him and do his best to force everyone's hatred for the other causes of the war to shift onto himself. If he blames himself enough other people will blame the whole thing on him. With a common enemy they won't turn on each other. Help each other without incentive, too. It's like what he had been wanting to do except. Without the fighting.

 

“You'll make me go back to Konoha,” Sasuke says, dropping his shuriken into the dirt. They'll make him go back to that place and then stick him in a cell. He doesn't know if he can bring himself to comply with that.

 

He isn't putting the good of the world first anymore, so he can actually. Consider his own feelings, for once, not about accepting hatred but just. How he feels about. Other things. If he is forced to stay alive then he needs a goal and that is changing the shinobi system and everyone in it and as much as that is reason to stay alive it's more like a side job. He doesn't have a direct path to his goal anymore but doing ‘good’ is only what he'll do when he stumbles across it. Like hell he'll actively seek out wrongdoers or whatever bullshit.

 

So, with no main purpose in his life he has no reason to push aside his feelings. Here they are.

 

“Of course!” Naruto exclaims. “It's your home!”

 

Sasuke levels him with a blank stare. Naruto isn't this dense. He isn't.

 

“It's not,” he replies. “It never was.”

 

There's a pause before Naruto replies. “Maybe you don't think it's so great _now_ , but it must've been when you were a kid.”

 

Sasuke has had enough of walking. He sits down and leans against a boulder a ways across from Kakashi and Sakura. He takes a breath and closed his eyes and leans his head back against the rock. He's _tired_.

 

“Konoha was more of an idea to me than a place,” Sasuke admits. He'd never really thought about this until after his fight with Danzo. How much of a home Konoha had ever really been to him. “When my family was alive I was confined to the Uchiha District. The only parts of Konoha I knew were the Academy and the road to it.”

 

When there is no immediate reply, Sasuke peeks open his right eye. Naruto's sitting beside him, staring at him with wide eyes.

 

“Seriously?”

 

“Hn,” Sasuke replies, letting his eyes slip closed again. “After that Konoha was less of a home than the place with the fastest possible route to power. And then it wasn't, so I left.”

 

Neither Kakashi nor Sakura say anything. Sasuke at least expects some kind of refute from Sakura but there's nothing.

 

“But the Uchiha District was a home, right?” Naruto asks. “It was part of Konoha.”

 

“Was it, though?”

 

No reply. Expected.

 

Then, “What about us?”

 

Sasuke doesn't say anything for a while, letting the sun warm his skin as it changes angles. Just past noon. “Team Seven was… familiar,” he decides. “But you were the only one I felt like I could really rely on. I'm not sure why, maybe because I was similar to you, or wanted to be like you. So I guess you did become something like a home to me, after a while.”

 

The silence tells him that Naruto is processing that. Thinking. Sasuke lets out a long exhale. He's already said a lot, so he might as well say everything now.

 

“It was difficult,” Sasuke adds. “Leaving. If I had to choose what the hardest decision I ever made was, it wouldn't be making myself hate Itachi, or attacking the Summit. It would be walking away from you, right here, back then.” Sasuke pauses, letting that sink in. There's one more thing he has to say, though. “But I don't regret it.” A sharp inhale from beside him. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I stayed, but I'll never regret leaving.”

 

A breeze ruffles Sasuke's hair. It's strange hearing the forest without any sounds. No birds, no animals, no people. Just wind and dry leaves.

 

“Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto says after a long while. Sasuke had fallen asleep, maybe, because when he opens his eyes the sun's halfway down the sky and the blond is wiping away the blood on Sasuke's arm absentmindedly. Sasuke shifts and Naruto releases his hand. “What would happen if Sasuke and I didn't come back to Konoha after releasing the jutsu?”

 

Sasuke tilts his head slightly to look at Naruto, eyes a fraction larger. Kakashi raises his eyebrows.

 

“I mean, what if we just… not go into hiding, but sort of? Like, not going to any of the villages. Just us. Out here. I wouldn't want us to have people searching for us.”

 

“I don't think it matters what would happen,” Kakashi says, eyes crinkling into upwards crescents. It's a sign of true affection that Sasuke can't recognize. “What should I tell everyone?”

 

“That we're taking a break,” Naruto says, standing up. “Sasuke?”

 

“You're going to leave everything,” Sasuke says, but it's more of a question.

 

“Despite what I said, somewhere along the line you became more important than becoming Hokage and everything else,” Naruto replies. “Let's release this thing and get out of here.”


	2. flowering

* * *

Naruto hadn't expected leaving to be so easy.

 

It feels hypocritical, running away from the more difficult path when he'd always accused Sasuke of doing the same with Orochimaru. There were certain aspects of his worldview that Naruto thought would never change, and then came Sasuke, breaking down everything he had ever held true.

 

It isn't a bad thing. Becoming Hokage is still something he wants, but after talking to Itachi and after fighting with Sasuke, there are other things he wants even more.

 

He thought _Is the shinobi system really so bad?_ and then _How does the world look from the eyes of its worst victims?_ which led to _How does Sasuke see it?_

 

And even after all of that, there was still the nagging in the deepest parts of his heart that told him that that wasn't what made it so easy to leave. He was lying to himself without even realizing. He doesn't know if it's love, or if he's rejecting it because he's afraid of it and what it means for him, but damn it all of that isn't what it feels like.

 

Leaving was easy because Sasuke was with him.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Naruto cranes his neck upwards to see Sasuke approaching. The grass tickles his neck as he does, the little bit of dew on them making his skin cold. Sasuke sits down beside his head, following Naruto's gaze to where the stars are hanging in the sky.

 

“I couldn't sleep,” he says, drawing a curtain of gentle haze over his mind. It's a lulling sort of twilight and Naruto basks in it. “Isn't it weird that the moon's hollow and we just _created_ another one in another dimension with this one's core?”

 

Sasuke laughs, and it's more air than voice, fitting into the night so naturally that Naruto wonders if he's being quiet on purpose. The grass beside him rustles and in the next moment Sasuke's lying down, mirroring his position. “I prefer not to think about that.”

 

Naruto allows the silence between them to settle back in. He notices that Sasuke has placed himself on his left and thinks that that might be so neither of them have to remember that they'd blown the other's arms to nothingness. Very carefully, just so that the memories will back off and let him have his peace, Naruto reaches his hand out far enough so it touches Sasuke's. Sasuke hums almost inaudibly, but that's the only reaction so Naruto lets his hand rest there.

 

“The Raikage wants me in prison,” Sasuke says. Naruto looks over at him and his eyebrows are pushed together but his eyes are closed. “He wants to reward you for your effort in the war.”

 

Naruto is surprised. Kakashi-sensei must've told the other kage what Naruto's up to now, so it makes him lose some respect for A if he wants to find them anyway.

 

“How do you know?” he asks, knowing full well that the single civilian town they visited wouldn't have had any information about that.

 

Sasuke unravels at the question, whatever tension that was left in him leaking out. Naruto waits until Sasuke picks out his words.

 

“A hawk told me,” he says. “They haven't left me alone since the war.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Senjutsu.”

 

Naruto waits, but Sasuke doesn't say anything more. He flips on his side to look at him.

 

“Aren't the snakes the ones with senjutsu?”

 

Sasuke keeps looking at the sky. “Hawks have their own. Aoda asked, but Kabuto already…” He trails off and sighs. “Senjutsu.”

 

“The toads taught me senjutsu,” Naruto says, resting his chin in his palm. Now it's Sasuke's turn to flip over and look at him. His bangs splay out, some bits sticking to his cheeks because of the wetness on the grass.

 

“Jiraiya wanted me to learn. Said he could use it but I never saw…”

 

The night drowns out around them as Naruto tells Sasuke all that he missed while he was gone, smiling and snorting and insulting Naruto's stupidity where appropriate. He sometimes sprinkles in bits of his own time away, and Naruto repeats them in his head and clings to them like it's the only thing he knows.

 

//

 

Sasuke wakes up to Naruto, eyes closed and drooling. The warmth of the sun ghosts across his skin and he thinks _I wish every day started like this_.

 

Naruto wakes up a moment later while Sasuke is still blinking the sleep out of his eyes. _You fell asleep while I was talking_ , Naruto mumbles. It's quiet and raspy and the same morning voice that Naruto had had when they were kids, if a little deeper. _Bastard._

 

_Loser._

 

And it's entirely anticlimactic, the way Naruto inches forward and kisses him. It's nothing more than a hesitant little touch, a flicker across Sasuke's lip, a question. Sasuke presses back, closed-mouth and gentle, an answer, and they keep exchanging the tiniest of kisses until Naruto pulls away and starts laughing.

 

“What?” Sasuke asks, eyebrows scrunched together. Naruto still has the brightest smile on his face when he answers.

 

“I'm just really happy,” 

 

Sasuke hums, the edges of his lips twitching upwards. “You smell like shit," he says between a yawn, even though Naruto knows he smells perfectly fine. He sits up and drags Naruto along with him. “Let me show you something.”

 

They find a big enough stream — they're still in Fire Country and the east has plenty of those — and Sasuke shows Naruto a suiton jutsu which simultaneously serves as a shower and brushing teeth all the while keeping his clothes dry. Naruto realizes why Sasuke always looks so fucking pristine.

 

“How come no one else knows this?” Naruto asks in the middle of Sasuke repeating the hand signs to him. They don't need to be in the river, but even for a perfect jinchuuriki it's not easy to control chakra-turned-water. Natural water is comparatively far easier to wield, especially for something as non-aggressive as this.

 

“Orochimaru taught it to me. Anyone who was an adult before the Third War would know.” Naruto keeps staring, so Sasuke continues after a moment of hesitation. ”After that bathing wasn't a commodity so it wasn't taught. Even during the war it wasn't widely used because people couldn't waste even a drop of chakra.”

 

“Do you know how much easier this makes my life?”

 

Sasuke flicks his nose. “It doesn't make you completely dirt-free. You still have to shower if there's one available.”

 

“My water bills will be nonexistent.”

 

“You will continue taking showers, Naruto.”

 

“You'll never know.”

 

Sasuke almost regrets trying to teach this to him. “Just do the hand signs, moron.” Naruto does, and because he somehow still doesn't understand basic chakra theory he ends up completely drenched. Sasuke activates the sharingan.

 

“Do it again.”

 

He mimics what Naruto does and then it's easy to find the problem. “ _No_ ,” he says because it's so far off from what's supposed to be done that he realizes he probably didn't explain it well enough. “You're using the jutsu as if it's an attack. Just… ease your chakra into the water and then control it.” Sasuke doesn't quite know what else to say. It's easy for him because he made Kirin — a jutsu which can only be used with natural lightning. It would probably be easier to explain something like this to a doton user, but Naruto uses fūton.

 

“Sorry.” Naruto rubs the back of his head. “I'll get it, give me one more shot…”

 

He tries again and it doesn't work. It doesn't help that they're not used to using one hand for jutsu. Sasuke has the advantage in that regard; the rinnegan helps to control and direct his chakra in general. He can only guess that nine-tails chakra makes it more difficult to do that.

 

“The jutsu did it's job,” Sasuke says, brushing it off. No use trying to get it perfect now. “Just change and let's go.”

 

“I swear I'll have it down next time.” Naruto jogs to where their bags are lying against a tree. “Anyway, Gekomatsu came back while we were coming here. Said that we still have two days of walking.”

 

Sasuke nods and steps out of the river. He rolls his pants down and picks up his bag. Uzushio isn't far, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspiration hit me like a truck. check out my profile for social media tags including discord and tumblr. feel free to throw ideas and predictions for this fic at me through there or in the comments! i love discussion and if not that then we can simply gush about sns together <3

**Author's Note:**

> a background bunny which was sleeping in my storage. might never get updated, but feel free to subscribe for uzushio, sage!Sasuke, sns, fūinjutsu, cat summons, and more
> 
> I love and appreciate all comments, including but not limited to:
> 
>   * short comments (and keyboard smashes!)
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> 

> 
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